


Accidental Magic

by bartycrouchjrs



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Magic, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-12 02:22:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20126653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bartycrouchjrs/pseuds/bartycrouchjrs
Summary: Usually when Crowley is doing something nice for him, he’s doing it knowingly, consciously.





	Accidental Magic

“This is rather undignified, don’t you think?” Aziraphale says huffily. He rises slowly from the bench, eyeing Crowley dubiously, who has made himself comfortable in a leisurely sprawl on the grass a short distance away.

“Oh, please, angel, _relax_,” Crowley hisses, clicking his tongue at him. He’s got his hands tucked behind his head and his legs crossed at the ankles, a crooked grin on his face. Stretched out like this, so cocksure and so laidback at once, Aziraphale can truly appreciate the sight that Crowley makes—his slim waist, his long legs, the glint of red in his hair. He is the picture of sloth, of unabashed enjoyment. “It’s a _park_. Honestly, Aziraphale, what do you think the grass is _for_?”

“For… aesthetic appreciation?” Aziraphale ventures, but he comes to sit beside Crowley, regardless, feeling, for several moments, like he has no idea what to do with his legs, or his arms, or how to maintain any semblance of posture.

They’re retired now, Aziraphale expects. On a long and well-deserved holiday, Crowley prefers to think. Whatever you call it, it’s the reason they can afford to go around lounging in parks all day in the first place.

Crowley lowers his shades just enough to peer at Aziraphale over the metal rims, one eyebrow cocked. “If you’re going to join me in my _indignity_, you may as well bloody commit,” he points out. “Don’t worry; I promise to miracle away any grass stains on your precious coat.” After a beat, he adds, facetious, “Though I _daresay_ it wouldn’t kill you to get a new one.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Aziraphale tells him primly, and is almost looking forward to Crowley’s vehement denial of the sentiment—to that pinched look he always gets on his face that makes it look as if he’s just eaten something sour. Perhaps time has made them both a bit predictable; Crowley scowls at him, a halfhearted gesture at best, and Aziraphale knows by now to brace himself against the giddy, simmering feeling in the pit of his stomach that inevitably comes with being on the receiving end of one of those looks. At long last, he lies back and folds his hands over his stomach, as much to sort himself out as to see what’s got Crowley so hellbent on lazing about under a tree.

“If only it weren’t so gloomy today,” Aziraphale sighs, resigning himself to this turn of events.

“_Pfft_, sunshine is overrated,” Crowley drawls, which Aziraphale thinks is sort of rich coming from someone who has an entire room dedicated to his houseplants. He’s about to tell him so, but he becomes momentarily sidetracked by a peal of sunlight reflecting off of the lenses of Crowley’s glasses and is compelled to look upward. The trees, to his amazement, have begun to shiver apart, causing sunlight to trickle through the leaves, through the spaces they’ve created. Pinpricks of gold cascade down over their spot on the lawn.

“Oh, isn’t that strange,” Aziraphale remarks, gazing all around in muted wonder. The sun seems to favor him especially, casting the angel in a brilliant spotlight; meanwhile, the sky over the rest of the park remains the same unremarkable shade of gray as before. Next to him, Crowley sits bolt upright, face tilted up at the trees in a look of utter disbelief, his mouth agape.

_Is this you, Crowley?_ Aziraphale itches to ask, but he doesn’t dare. _Did you do this for me?_ If he did, he seems to have done it inadvertently. But what else could explain such an occurrence—the timing, the miraculous quality of it? Its sole target? Aziraphale has never heard before of magic taking on a mind of its own, but perhaps it’s altogether different with demons—their having such volatile emotions and all.

Usually when Crowley is doing something nice for him, he’s doing it knowingly, consciously. He plays it off, of course—waves a hand, says it’s no big deal, grumbles as Aziraphale smiles and thanks him—but deep down, Aziraphale knows that Crowley soaks up his gratitude like a sponge. After all, who else is there, really, in this great, cosmic universe, for Crowley to be _nice_ to? If Crowley wants to part some trees for him, to feel just a little more human if only for a moment, then Aziraphale is happy to indulge him; he’d part the _Red Sea_ for him, if he asked.

Everything has always seemed, to Aziraphale, a touch brighter when Crowley is around. Today, of course, is no exception—a testament to the fact, rather.

“Perhaps I’ll borrow your sunglasses,” Aziraphale quips, his eyes watering from more than just the sun.

————

Aziraphale and Crowley remain steadfastly in Crisis Averted Mode for several weeks following the almost-Armageddon. They celebrate in a sort of dazed yet elated incredulity—the kind of hazy acknowledgement of a traumatic event that, if stopped and pondered too long, would more than likely send one or both of them into hysterics.

They go to dinner. Visit museums, theaters, gardens. Go on long drives in the Bentley with the windows rolled down. They meet in parks and feed bread to the ducks. On one memorable occasion, Aziraphale had even given Crowley a manicure.

(There is something very satisfying about painting Crowley’s nails, Aziraphale discovers. In all of the time that Aziraphale has known him—and it has been a very long time—Crowley almost never sits still; always fidgeting, gesturing, swirling a wine glass, pressing buttons on the Bentley’s stereo. It’s a wonder, he thinks, that Crowley manages to lie still long enough to get even a wink of sleep, let alone an entire _century_ of it.

But on this day, Crowley is subdued. Malleable. He lets Aziraphale have his way with him—allows him to hold his hand, spread his fingers, angle his wrist this way and that. He shivers at the first slide of black polish against his pinky—perhaps he hadn’t expected it to be so cool to the touch—but otherwise, he is completely still.

The quiet calm that Crowley exudes, in the span of those twenty to thirty minutes—as if he were, for a short time, truly at peace with the world—is something that Aziraphale will never forget.)

Sometimes, apropos of nothing, Crowley comes bearing gifts.

“I brought you a houseplant,” Crowley announces upon his arrival at Aziraphale’s bookshop. “Thought it might encourage you to draw the curtains in this dusty old place every once in a while. I mean, I know you’re always fretting about your book spines fading and whatnot, but _Satan below_, is it depression central in here.”

Aziraphale can’t help it; he clasps his hands together in delight, bouncing on the tips of his feet. “Oh, Crowley, you shouldn’t have.” He should scold him for making that dig about his bookshop—“I thought you said sunshine was overrated,” he imagines he’d say—but presently, he’s too touched by the gesture to care. No special occasion for Crowley to hide behind, this time—just kindness, or an act thereof, distilled its purest form.

A strange expression takes over Crowley’s face, then—haughty, exasperated, yet almost _shy_. “Well, I did, anyway,” he plows on. “It’s a cactus. Prickly little devil. Requires very little care, or water, or _sunlight_, for that matter, so you won’t have to—”

“I _adore_ it,” Aziraphale interjects, eager to reassure him. “It’s going right above the Jane Austens; I’ve already decided.”

Crowley scoffs, then, but it’s mostly for show; Aziraphale can detect the fondness in his features, in the way that his scowl goes a bit soft around the edges. “Hopeless romantic,” he grouses, as Aziraphale waggles a finger at the plant and coos at it.

Crowley makes a choking sound. “_Christ_, don’t—” Aziraphale slants him a meaningful look. “—oh, shut it, just— don’t _sing_ to it, that’s— they get all _soft_ and _wimpy_ when you do that—”

Aziraphale plucks the little clay pot right from his hands, not about to be lectured on the proper care of houseplants by a demon who frequently curses at and threatens and shouts frightening things at his own. (Aziraphale still remembers the time they’d made a Caprese salad using the tomatoes from Crowley’s tomato plant; you could practically _taste_ the fear, and fear did not pair well with mozzarella.) But almost as soon as the pot leaves Crowley’s hands, the cactus begins to grow silky, red petals, tiny red-green spines giving way to thorns, and Aziraphale soon finds himself holding not a potted cactus, but a very generous bouquet of roses.

“Oh, my,” Aziraphale says faintly.

Crowley glowers openly at his house-warming gift. “_Traitor_,” he hisses, voice dripping with venom. His face has gone a bit splotchy. “I demand you change back!”

The petals wilt ever-so-slightly, but they remain steadfastly in their current form.

“Er, so sorry about this,” he tells Aziraphale, visibly flustered. “These plants, I’m telling you, if you don’t discipline them well, they start acting out in all sorts of ways—”

“I’m sure the poor thing is just… a little confused,” Aziraphale says uncertainly. He doesn’t mean to sound uncertain; he desperately wants to put Crowley out of his misery, to reassure him that he doesn’t mind these little spurts of… accidental magic. Clearly, Crowley is embarrassed, and it’s an endearing but nonetheless terrible look on him; he so prefers a Crowley that is jovial, and outspoken, and vain—that has so thoroughly convinced himself that he’s cool because he drives a vintage Bentley, or wears shades indoors, or saunters around with the air of someone desperately trying to imitate a cool person. Mostly, though, Aziraphale just likes to imagine that Crowley has, against all odds, managed to shed away some of his insecurities, in the same way that a snake sheds its own skin. Aziraphale has no shortage of inward-facing doubt himself, but Crowley’s is the kind of potent self-loathing that comes only with the terrible affliction of being a creature that is too good for Hell yet not good enough for Heaven.

“Why don’t you help me pick out a vase,” Aziraphale offers, an olive branch, and drags Crowley inside his shop by a leather sleeve.

————

“What are you looking at?” Aziraphale asks suspiciously.

“Oh, _nothing_. Nothing at all,” Crowley insists, maddeningly nonchalant. He’s got his elbow on the table, chin in his hand—a sleepy smile on his face. The low lighting of the restaurant renders his features harsh, devastating, all hard lines and sharp angles; the quirk of his lips casts a shadow over his chin. “Just, you know, admiring. Nice profile, you’ve got.”

Aziraphale coughs. The room feels very warm, all of a sudden. “It is nothing spectacular, I’m sure.”

“_Liessss_,” Crowley, quite literally, hisses at him. Or, it might have been a hiss, but also very possibly just the… drunken slurring. Crowley, in particular, has been a bit heavy-handed with the Cabernet tonight. “Angels aren’t supposed to lie.”

“And demons always tell the truth?” Aziraphale counters smugly.

Crowley leans in close, conspiratorial. “Only the very bad ones,” he concedes, with a goofy smile, and Aziraphale feels a pull of affection for him so strong that it knocks the wind out of him.

Normally when Crowley is this far gone, Aziraphale is, also. This is new territory for him—entertaining Crowley’s antics while, not precisely sober, but not quite _drunk_, either. “You’ve had too much to drink, my dear.”

“Nah, ’m’alright,” Crowley slurs, slumping back into his chair. His head lolls a bit to the side. “Think I’ve got baby-neck, though.”

“I don’t follow,” Aziraphale says, bewildered.

“You know. _Baby-neck_. Babies can’t hold their heads up. They’re so _tiny_, and their heads are so fat and stupid.” Crowley clicks his tongue. “You know, I rather like babies. Complete idiots, the lot of them. Tiny, squirmy, pea-brained humans. Some of Her best work, if I do say so—”

“Crowley.”

“Er, right. Sorry. As I was saying… it happens when you’ve been drinking, as we often are, and suddenly your neck decides, ‘I’m tired of holding this stupid thing up,’ and just sort of gives up.”

Aziraphale blinks. “That is fascinating, my dear,” he says, wholly unconvincingly.

“Thank you,” Crowley says sincerely, and reaches once more for his wine glass.

“Perhaps we should sober up soon,” Aziraphale suggests, as mildly as he can. When Crowley only makes a face at him, he grapples for a decent excuse. “You seem a bit wobbly. You might spill your wine. It could get on your… clothes,” he finishes lamely.

“Oh, don’t you worry about _my_ clothes,” Crowley insists. “I’ve got loads of other clothes. Plenty of nice things to wear.”

“Ah, yes. Of course, you do. Very nice, I’m sure,” Aziraphale agrees, not really listening.

“_Your_ clothes, on the other hand,” Crowley continues, too loudly, “are very… traditional. Very, er, antiquated. Honestly, angel, and I’m saying this as your friend—_tartan_?! Is _not_ stylish.”

“Noted,” Aziraphale says, rubbing his temples.

“I mean, don’t you think it’s sort of incredible,” Crowley says, raking a hand through his hair, his voice taking on a slightly hysterical edge, “that I, Anthony J. Crowley, am in love with a man who wears only _beige_.”

Aziraphale can only stare at him, stunned into silence by the admission. Crowley sobers up almost immediately, after that, coming to with a despairing little gurgle and a groan.

Aziraphale gently takes Crowley’s hand; it’s cold, as it always is, but Aziraphale is so flushed from the wine that the chill is almost a welcome reprieve. “I think, probably, that you didn’t mean that,” he says quietly. Then, he laughs, all messy breath, a hollow sound. “Except for, maybe, the bit about the tartan.”

The candle at the center of the table seems to dim considerably.

“I really do,” Crowley murmurs.

Aziraphale can’t quite parse that. “What’s that?”

Crowley’s smile wilts. He looks miserable. “Love you.”

Aziraphale sucks in a breath. His heart sinks and swells, hopeful yet disbelieving. “Crowley—”

“I suppose I should get going. Duty calls, and all,” Crowley says in a rush, and rises abruptly to his feet, chair scraping against the floor, silverware clattering.

It’s a terrible excuse; neither of them have so much as lifted a finger for their respective head offices since the body-swap incident—except for, perhaps, a middle one, when one was ranting and the moment called for it. Still, it’s the one that Crowley flings at him as he abandons their table in a haste and makes for the door, leaving Aziraphale to gape after him, to reconcile the tumultuous flurry taking place behind his ribcage.

————

“You ridiculous man,” Aziraphale cries from the front entry to Crowley’s flat, punctuating every word with a fist to the door. “You old serpent. You absolute _bastard_.”

When Crowley finally opens the door, slowly, tentatively, he nearly cowers at the severe look on Aziraphale’s face.

“I happen to like beige! And tartan!” Aziraphale yells. “And I will not take criticism from someone who dresses like a— a— a goth!”

“A _goth_,” Crowley splutters, looking more than a little insulted.

“Yes!”

“I rather thought we’d overlooked that part of the conversation,” Crowley says huffily, crossing his arms.

“We have not overlooked it!” Aziraphale shouts.

Crowley waves his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright! I’m sorry!”

Aziraphale squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to deflate. He takes several deep, rattling breaths and lets them out, slowly, through his teeth.

After a long stretch of silence, he says, “I forgive you,” with a reluctance that truly speaks to his frustration. Then, he reels Crowley in by the collar of his shirt and kisses him, square on the mouth.

Crowley makes a surprised noise against his mouth. It begins to rain outside, like something out of a romantic film.

When Aziraphale finally pulls away, Crowley has the panicked look in his eyes of someone who’d thought that they’d been drowning and has finally breached the surface. “You— jeez— take me to dinner first!” Crowley exclaims, sounding out of breath as he comes up for air.

“I did, but you ran away,” Aziraphale points out. Crowley laughs, then, a sound full of energy, and leans in to try again, noses and lips slotting into place.

If God’s plan truly is ineffable, Aziraphale muses, then it would be impossible to know for sure—but _this_, he and Crowley, together, certainly _feels_ like it’s meant to be. A love that feels as right as a pair of knees on a church floor.

“You should know,” Aziraphale says suddenly, feeling that he at least owes Crowley this, “that I do, too.”

Crowley blinks at him, slow, uncomprehending. His smile is slow to leave his face. He looks endearingly stupid, completely thick-witted. “Do… what?”

“Love you,” Aziraphale says simply, a page taken right out of Crowley’s book, and kisses the question mark off of his face.

At that precise moment in time, in the top drawer of Crowley’s bedside table, a ring materializes, shiny and gold, in a velvet box and waits to be found.

————

Crowley is driving him back to the shop after a particularly lovely dinner—crêpes—when Aziraphale suddenly pipes up, over the upbeat piano notes of Queen’s _Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy_, “Your seat-warmers are heavenly.”

Crowley frowns as he blows through another red light. “The Bentley doesn’t have—” he starts to say, but he stops himself short and doesn’t elaborate. Aziraphale hums and sinks further into the heated leather, thinking nothing of it.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a Tumblr: [bartycrouchjrs](http://bartycrouchjrs.tumblr.com).


End file.
